I'd like to see MSFT try to impose "Stack Ranking" dismissals on a group of Europeans. A writer on one of the other blogs asked, "Who bought whom?"

Meanwhile today: There may be a savior company out there that will bail out BlackBerry but it apparently won’t be Huawei. In an interview with Reuters, Huawei board member Chen Lifang said that her company has no interest in buying BlackBerry or any other smartphone company.

I have seen quite a few US companies "integrating" European workers, and the mileage did vary a lot. A lot of US banks and tobacco companies were extremely good at that and used a cautious approach, I also had the luck to work for PanAm as my first employer (1984-91), and despite their financial situation and declining reputation they were nothing else but excellent with us. But I have also seen the exact opposite, Delta being the all-time low (they did have some form of staff ranking, an official denunciation hotline and, it did not even stop there... they even tried to install a mandatory morning mass without pay - a big hit with our almost 900 loading and cleaning staff being almost 80% Muslim; the definite highlight though was inviting a Muslim guy for his 30th company anniversary for some pork sausage).

Well, sorry for the detour, Elop knows the Nokia culture, and as much as I dislike him, I do believe that he did learn something about the mentality and sensibilities during the last three years.

I do have a certain feeling that BB will not be bought by a "saviour", but rather by a ghoul. Their devices business is toast, and what will become of BES and the NOC in the hand of a "foreign" company (if that's the case)... remains to be seen. None of our customers would buy secure messaging solutions from an Asian company (except for maybe a Japanese one), and thanks to the NSA, the US does not ring that well with EU business customers right now either (half of our customers have already cancelled Azure or Amazon Cloud projects).

You had stopped reading after the $14.5m paid to MS, the part that is insulting is the free use of goorola's patents.

I think the "free" use of MM patents comes from MS having to pay $1.8 million to MM to license the patents they're using, but now that MM owes MS $14.8 million, MS don't really have to pay MM to use their patents for the next 7 to 8 years. And figuring the MM patents in question will most likely expire in that time, MS can effectively use MM patents for free, if this judgement stands.

I think the "free" use of MM patents comes from MS having to pay $1.8 million to MM to license the patents they're using, but now that MM owes MS $14.8 million, MS don't really have to pay MM to use their patents for the next 7 to 8 years. And figuring the MM patents in question will most likely expire in that time, MS can effectively use MM patents for free, if this judgement stands.

Yep, that is how I understood it, too.

But even if not, at least in the EU (I do not know the respective US laws well enough) the abuse of SEPs could indeed cause you to lose them, making them indeed free for everybody.

There is also a few quarters since the sale where Motorola lost money and Google ate the loss. Google also had to eat the loss in regards eliminating some jobs (eg paying insurance).

Yes, that's true. As I said, it's not trivial to calculate how much Motorola cost Google. There's also the opportunity cost (what else could they have done with that money) and the amount of time management spends on Moto. Plus, of course, tons of legal expenses.

All things considered, It was probably closer to $8 to $10 B than $12.5 B, but that's just a guess.

"I'm way over my head when it comes to technical issues like this"Gatorguy 5/31/13